I am not sure that I am seeing this. IS this the first edition where burst fire from a machine gun doesn't increase the damage directly? I know that buy reducing the amount they can defend, your net hits will increase the damage, but wow. No more damage bonus from full auto?

Do you no longer subtract 1/2 the lowest essence loss from cyber or bi, and use that for the total essence loss? If you just use straight essence, that's a serious nerf.

Check, and check.

Buttt... Guns have higher starting damage codes (as does everything else). As far as the cyber/bio thing goes.... I'll have to play with it a bit, but so far I feel that I can make street sams comprable to adepts so i'm not supper worried about it.

I've done some pretty heavy adept vs. sam testing so far, and am still going.

You can make some very good sams, but you are essentially saddled with A or B resources. (I DID make a Merc on Resources C, but he had the bare bones of Muscle Replacement 2, Wired 1 and Aluminum Bone lacing, none of it Alphaware, and I had to take +20k nuyen with Bonus karma.)

I do find some of the new prices ridiculously overpriced(Muscle Aug and Toner, IMO, should add up to no more than 45k per level like the old days, and even THEN that's a lot compared to how much money you get, Muscle Replacement shouldn't be more than 20k, and for houserules I'm considering dropping Wired Reflexes to 25k/100k/215k(the latter just to make it even), and possibly dropping their Essence down to the levels that Adepts have to pay(especially with the 'budget sam' Boosted Reflexes having gone out the window after 3e). That being said, I find the Synaptic Boosters appropriately priced for the boost in Nuyen people get. I think Pheremones and the Cerebral Booster are overpriced by about 10k each.

(On the other hand and the bright side, Bone Density, Orthoskin and Dermal Plating went down, as did higher levels of Bone Lacing, which is a plus and pretty cool, Skillwires are 20k/level which actually isn't terrible either, and there are reasonably priced odds and ends, but the stuff that's overpriced runs from slightly to very much so, IMO. On the other bright side...it's not THAT many pieces, IMO, that are overpriced, just a handful that stick out like a sore thumb next to what is generally pretty good prices.)Cyberlimbs are also actually very affordable and very good.

I'm overall against reducing the ess cost of Wired reflexes for two reasons. If you want lower ess cost go with synaptic accelerators. if you want the highest possible bonus to reflexes for stupid high amounts of essc go with wired and reflex enhancement. Thats the trade off.

Bone lacing is amazing. I did a post some where comparing cost and benefits of sams vs adepts.

I like the prices on most cyber, and one of the few (maybe 3) house rules we use is the cyberlimbs have stats equal to the user. I can see strenth (sort of) being uneven, but agility, wow.

As for the burst fire change, I am sad. Oh well.

The cyber thing though, whoa. That sucks LOL! Since Bio came out with Bio index, there has been a way to get both, now, finito!

I think when you look at the changes to Alpha/Beta/Delta grade 'ware, you'll see that over time there's not much of an Essence loss to players, really (in my experience it's actually been the other way around, where most folks are able to cram in more stuff over their career).

YMMV as always, and I do wish we'd been able to adjust a few Essence costs directly...but I think it works out okay.

I have to play with the rule, myself-testing to see if I really wanted to. What I'd *probably* consider in the end is either A. Keep the price, lower the Essence cost, but keep them as is(can't stack with Enhancers unless Wireless) or B. Lower the price, keep the Essence cost, but do some tweaking to allow them to work with Reaction Enhancers(granting a bigger bonus for wireless.) I just feel that they can afford to be a *little* better than they are after their nerf in working with Enhancers, but I don't think, now that I look at it, I'd do 'all of the above.' (And Crit, that is a good point about the cheaper better grade ware, that could help the Essence cost more than I think.)

I dunno why I have so many issues with the other prices, but I think it's my brain trying to adjust for nuyen. In the old days, when you capped at 1 million, Muscle Replacement was 20k/level, and Augmentation equalled 45k/level if you got both stats. Now you have less than half that, and they're more expensive, it just doesn't *feel* right to me overall, which is why I'm adjusting it. Not a TON, but just enough. I'd be willing to be content with leaving Wired as is after doing some lookovers IRT the Beta and Delta grade stuff, however.

EDIT: I do want to add that my wishing to change some stuff for the better isn't done out of some sorta 'cyberbias'-indeed, since about halfway through 4e, I shifted more over to the magic side. I was more of a 'Sam4Life' type in 2e/3e(with a side of Merc), but my tastes changed a bit over the years. THAT said, I do still have enough of the Sam in me to have some concern for the cyber side of things as well.

You're not alone there, for what it's worth.

I would really like to know what the hell happened to the prices for Skillwires, personally. Rating 6 Wires at 120,000 Nuyen is stupid expensive, and the requirements for the Skilljack is also dumb (And WAY overpriced, Rating 6 Skilljack (to go with the Wires) is another 120,000 Nuyen). Yes, costs of the actual skill chips went down a bit, but why were the systems themselves adjusted so dramatically? And why the requirement for the skilljack, now? Storage space is virtually unlimited, but I now require a JACK to run an ACTIVE skill now, rather than storing them in the wires like in SR4A? Just dumb.

Doesn't seem to jive with the idea that a corp slapping wires in a worker bee is cheaper than training some faceless mook on how to put something together.

Wait, if you have to get a Jack for this, where am I gonna get my wireless bonus from with that skillwire?

It was only in SR4 that the wires didn't require a Jack, so I have no real issue there.

For those of us interested in fine tuning the play experience of our players, it would be very useful to us for you to share some of your insight in where me might best apply that fine tuning, with respect to essence costs.

My concern is that while I have some kneejerk considerations for essence costs, I'm concerned about unintended consequences of modifying what I believe was a heavily play tested system.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

The main thing that's my only concern with Essence costs(not so much price, since the stuff I'd mostly be lowering is Bioware, and then not even an enormous amount, just enough to 'matter' but not enough to 'matter too much') is the lowering of how much Beta and Delta grade ware costs, and making them actually available to people. Delta clinics(I suppose people's versions of Seattle may vary here) don't seem to be as completely out there anymore; while not *common* they don't strike me as *impossible.*

So with them easier-and cheaper-to get, it's my only holdoff. Now that I look at it, Delta Grade Wired Reflexes run 1/1.5/2.5, actually making them *better* cost wise than the Adept power. Of course, you need to get some of them.

Yeah, I think I'm alright with Essence costs, looking at them, I just have more problem with the monetary costs(and even then, it's more just a case of shaving 5k-10k off select pieces and they look a lot better to me.)

FWIW, one thing I did lower the price on-which isn't even ware-are fake SINs. They used to be 1k/level. Now we get not quite double the nuyen, but they increased beyond double. I put them at 1.5k/level. Errs in the side of the player, but people burn them enough that I feel 1.5l/level is fine for them.

There were other ways to go about it (The Skillsoft jukebox is a good example) and they did not cost stupid amounts of Nuyen, either.

Yep, I usually ran a chip jack (1), datajack, and jukebox plugged into both. Allowed me to switch skillsofts via mental commands, didn't cost a ton of essense or nuyen. I also tended to run those characters with several datajacks though, so I'd have one installed in a convienent place for the wires to work (along the spine or something) well with the jukebox on the belt.

Indeed, we are on the same page.
In SR4, Downloading them to internal storage worked well, too. I had no real problems with them. Cost of the skills was atrocious, but not too horrible if you used a service.
Still not sure why that approach would not work, personally.

i love skill wires now. from outset a sam can get rating 4 skillwires (used). that is some serious utility! every 20k u can buy yourself a new rating 4 skill.... yes please!

I always kept the jukebox inside a compartment of a cyberarm, with an internal datajack for it.

Kept people from noticing that I was using it most of the time.

The problem is that you are paying 160,000 Nuyen (Rating 4 Wires and Jack) New or 120,000 Used. That is just stupid expensive. Especially for something that the Corps use to circumvent actual training of their work force. SO much for that idea in SR5. Looks like someone did not read that section of the world setting. *sigh*

Also a great option.

Corps don't pay full retail. They just pay the production cost.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

Irregardless... It is still a stupid high price point.

Even in SR4A, which is verifiably superior ( ), The Wires themselves only ran about 2,000 Nuyen per Rating Point, which is still significant. Add on an Expert System and a Datajack and you were seriously involved in Skillware. And even THEN, Skillwires were a rare build at my table. I can only remember a few characters over the years that actually used Skillsofts in any serious way (and most of them were a result of MBW's, rather then the SW's). Part of that was that the softs themselves were so outrageous (which could be solved by making them cheaper, or subscribing to a Service).

I'll have to really take a hard look at it before I draw a conclusion.

My kneejerk analysis is that it seems like Mundane characters shouldn't have a problem implementing it into their starting builds, but Awakened Characters will...

...which I am largely okay with.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

if it costs 2,000 nuyen to make it, and you're selling it for 20,000... it won't be long before your competitor decides to sell that same system for 19,000. at which point you (or yet another competitor) will decide to sell it for less, and so on and so forth, until you reach a point where it is actually at a reasonable price relative to it's cost.

particularly since as you reduce the price, more people will buy it.

for a device that is supposed to be so common that they mass produce it and install it into hundreds of thousands or even millions of people for use in the work force means that it really shouldn't be very expensive.

it's supposed to be a replacement for training your workers... if it costs 3 times as much as the education and training of that worker, it makes no sense.

You are, of course, correct on the merits of basic free market price incentives. However: Production costs are not the only elements that compose the "cost" part of "reasonable price relative to cost".

There are numerous other costs. R&D costs or Marketing costs to name two off the cuff.

Therefore, when I say that the Corp does not pay Retail Cost to outfit their employees with skill softs, they pay Production Cost, what I mean is the base production of a single unit from raw materials into manufactured good. Not the combined Production + R&D + Marketing + Administrative Overhead + etc, etc etc costs.

So yes: If the market could bear cheaper prices, it would. You're addressing, however, an unrelated point. Production costs can be pathetically small for some products, and still have enormous retail prices due to factors outside of mere production costs.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

Indeed... Awakened should not apply, at least not casually.

It really has nothing to do with "Can a Mundane incoprporate it into their build," it has to do with the insane prices that they cost. 10,000-12,000 Nuyne is doable for the common Man (like a car, it is an investment). When it becomes 240,000 Nuyen (Which is what Rating 6 Wires and Skilljack cost - And remember, Rating 6 is a Professional Rating), it is no longer something that is a viable option to the masses. At that price, only the elite can afford them, and that is sad, since they are not meant for the elite (who have access to the education of the megacorps). Hell, even at Rating 2 each, that runs 80,000 Nuyen, which is equivalent to a high end sports car for the elite. You no longer have the ability to rationally have someone with a low lifestyle getting SKillwires (to join the wired masses) to get a job. If they had that kind of money, they would not NEED the skillwires in the first place.

Would they be able to lease-to-own, however, exchanging five or ten years of indentured servitude to complete the cost of installation? And then wouldn't that five or ten years be strung out longer, and longer, with a payout that never comes?

I always felt that indentured servitude was a highly dystopian concept. It seems that incorporating it into the setting goes a long ways to reinforcing some core concepts of Cyberpunk, no?

It would seem that the opposite would not. Imagine self-made men, independent of their elite task masters, owning their own destinies. Rising from the lower classes, from hard work and core values. We'd need to phone up Horatio Alger immediately and make sure we weren't in danger of copyright infringement.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

Assume the indentured man, with rating 6 wires/jack. He owes 240,000 Nuyen, plus Interest. He liveis in a Low Income Housing area and has a wife and child (+20% Lifestyle Cost). He only makes about 2500 Nuyen/Month, or possibly less. 2400 of that is lifestyle, so he pays 100 Nuyen/Month on the "Lease" of the equipment. Not counting any interest, he will pay off the Wires/jack in only a short 2400 Months (200 Years or so). A little too dystopian for me. In 4A (with Rating 5 wires and Expert Driver), that payment would have netted him a payed in full status in only 10 long years. Still indentured, if you ask me. *shrug*

2500/Month is 30k a year. I would expect that Professional: 6 skills probably pay closer to 120k a year for some skillsets (Technical), and even on the low end shouldn't be falling beneath twice that: 60k.

Regardless, it doesn't matter. Whether he's projected to pay it off in ten years. Twenty years. Or five years. He doesn't pay it off. That's not how it works. Something always comes up. And that sweet pay-off gets kicked down the road. Generation after generation.

The moral of Cyberpunk is: You lose. You just get to choose how you lose. So I'm not sure what you mean by "a little too dystopian".

You lose your soul to the machine. You lose your life to the wage. You lose your morality in the shadows.

Shadowrunners are compelling, not because they have neat stuff, and blow things up (Which, yes, they do those things), but because they're the only bastion of hope rebelling against a System that exists, not despite them, but because of them. Except, with intended irony, their 'rebellion' is nothing more than playing their part in a game of someone else's choosing.

And in the end, the Corps are still there. And the runners are just a stain on the pavement. And a memory.

No-one gets out alive. It's just if you're good, when you go out it's with a bang and not a whimper.

-Wired_SR_AEGIS

This.

You're discounting the fact that 99% of the major corporations in the Sixth World will be fixing their prices for the maximum margin of profit.

you're discounting the fact that 99% of the major corporations in the sixth world would stab 100% of the major corporations in the sixth world in the back to make a dime (the remaining 1% of those corporations are currently in the process of getting torn to tiny little bits by the 99%).

the only way anyone other than the megas are going to be a consumer of this good is if it is cheaper to buy than an education (and in fact, the only way the megas are going to use it is if it's cheaper than an education to produce). and you can buy a hell of a lot of education with 160,000 nuyen. particularly since skillwires are generally pretty garbage for creative work.

even more to the point, if it isn't going to get you something cheaper than drones, then there is even *less* value in wasting money on skillwires for the corporations.

edit: another way to look at it: suppose skillwires rating 4 (enough to be considered a competent worker for most jobs, according to the skill rating descriptions) are used to get useful work out of a bunch of people desperate to sign up for any sort of work to get themselves off the streets, even if it's only to spend the next 20 or 40 years of their lives machining custom-made motorcycle parts or something like that, and discover that they're still flat broke and have nothing to fall back on when the corp tosses them back out on the streets.

that would mean that, essentially, there is 180,000 nuyen worth of hardware (used cost for skillwire 4 and skilljack rating 4) inside those people. do you REALLY think it's a good idea to set effectively a 180,000 nuyen bounty on kidnapping a corporate wageslave for any team that is interested in picking up some skillwires? heck, for that matter, they're supposedly breaking into high security facilities for a living. even if they *don't* need skillwires, do you really want to place a 45,000 nuyen bounty (plus whatever the face can negotiate for, at +9,000 per net hit) on the random wageslaves they could kidnap when they are on a shadowrun? because that's what it's worth just to fence the skillwires. obviously, if you also sell the corpse to tamanous, the value of kidnapping random wageslaves goes up.

so yeah... if this is a common item (and the setting tells us it is) for what essentially boils down to indentured servants in the megacorps, it creates stupidly large problems. problems that encourage your team to become organleggers.

for most groups, this would be considered a Bad Thing™

That hasn't been the case in the past. Just a while ago, that lawsuit about e-book prices proves it. More than one company was colluding to squeeze more money out of things that cost zero to produce and little to gain the rights to. With the profit margins most corps are running, it would end up being a question of screwing your opponents once, or staying in business for the long term. There's no way skillwires cost that much to manufacture, and assuming that malpractice insurance isn't as exorbitantly expensive as it is today (besides, if you're working on extraterritorial property, you might not even need it), surgery costs don't pick up that slack. I would imagine it's within the corporations' best interest to keep the majority of the workforce from getting skillwires on their own, anyway, since it effectively forces them to get a job with a mega before they can become the fancy chromed wageslave they want to be.

if the goal is to keep skillwires out of the hands of others, they wouldn't be selling them.

and it's a bit different considering an e-book is affordable whether it's 15 bucks or 20 books.

we're talking about something costing 240,000 nuyen to buy. the amount of expected sales at that price point is zero. you would have to be an idiot to even market it to anyone, because for 240,000 nuyen, they'll just go get the education to get the actual skills, and come out ahead.

the only way skillwires can lead to indentured servitude is if they're a cheaper option than getting actual training. unless it costs more than 240,000 nuyen to get a basic college education in the sixth world (which seems rather unlikely, to put it mildly), who's going to choose to take the dead-end option of skillwires?

more to the point, if there are 180,000 nuyen market value worth of resources in each of these chumps, how long do you think it's going to be before someone in the shadows (whether it's the PCs or someone else) starts to exploit that fact?

Why would most people need skillwires anyway? They're only good for physical active skills. Corps probably don't need to load activesofts into most employees, because running and jumping aren't in most wageslaves' job descriptions.

All you need is a low-rating skilljack, and for 44,000 nuyen you can turn a complete waste of space into a functional data-entry specialist. For 144,000 nuyen you can make a high school dropout a professional accountant.

Anything more than 200k is unreasonable for anyone who would just as soon take the permanent Low lifestyle.

ummm... what description of skillwires and skilljacks are you looking at?

because my book says that skilljacks only let you run knowsofts and linguasofts (or you can run any activesoft as a knowsoft), and you need skillwires to run any activesoft as an activesoft.

perhaps you've misunderstood the entry on activesofts:

"Activesofts replace physical active
skills, basically every Active skill that isn’t based on Magic
or Resonance."

that's lowercase physical active skills. not uppercase. it goes on to specify that it includes "basically every Active skill that isn't based on Magic or Resonance" as matching that description.

Whether or not it's upper or lowercase doesn't really matter. "Physical active skills" is a skill heading. "Basically every Active skill that isn't based on Magic or Resonance" isn't exactly a solid divider.

Further, skillwires are described as muscle control, which wouldn't make sense for pretty much anything that doesn't involve muscles. How would skillwires help you Negotiate or use Computer?

Now I'd be a huge fan of saying that just the Skilljack is necessary for mental skillsofts, but as it reads now it appears that mental skills are largely off the table.

yes, it does matter. Physical Active Skills is referring to the group of skills. physical active skills is just a description.

and i don't know how you can believe that "basically every Active skill that isn't based on Magic or Resonance".

here's a simple way to test if a skill falls into that description:

step 1: when you use the skill, do you roll magic + skill?
- if yes, it is based on magic.
- if no, proceed to step 2.
step 2: when you use the skill, do you roll resonance + skill?
- if yes, it is based on resonance.
- if no, proceed to step 3.
step 3: you can buy it as an activesoft.

also, if you don't think body language and the way you speak are important for social skills, or that there is no use of muscles when operating a computer (out of curiosity, how are *you* typing without using any muscles?), i'm just going to have to disagree with you there.

You're playing a linguistic game and ignoring 'basically' in the sentence. Does Gunnery count when you're jumped into a drone? Does Hacking count in VR? What is the actual criteria here?

Meanwhile a solid criteria appears in the sentence: physical active skills. So either they used that in error, or they used 'basically...' in error. The description of skillwires seems to imply the latter.

nope. notice that they capitalized active skills later in the sentence, but did not do that with physical active skills. furthermore, it is completely nonsensical to assume that corporations like to use them for their employees, which it explicitly states they do, unless they can grant useful skills for employment. and finally, if we interpret physical active skills as referring to Physical Active Skills, the category, the second half of the sentence is in complete and utter disagreement with the first half, because there is no possible way the Physical Active Skill group could even possibly be referring to "basically every Active skill that isn't based on Magic or Resonance". in contrast, if it just means active skills that have a physical component to them, that still makes sense with the second half of the sentence.

as to whether it works in VR, that's a bit up in the air... but at least in every past edition of SR, you still used physical controls in addition to your mental controls in VR, as far as i can tell. otherwise, why would cyberdecks have had keyboards on them? it is quite likely that cyberdecks still incorporate physical controls, although it likely no longer takes the form of a keyboard (although i suppose there's no reason it couldn't be a keyboard if you wanted it to).

certainly, rigging uses your muscles. pilot skills are still based on reaction, gunnery is still based on agility.

Except that the wage slave still loses even at the more reasonable SR4A Prices. And Admit it, SR4A is much saner in their pricing of the underlying technology. Yes, the wage slave will never pay it off, but that is okay.

The corporate drone is merely the mule for the wireset to go into. That wire is still and will always be corporate assets.

Should he ever want to retire/leave the company I am fairly certain there is a clause stating that the wire will be removed and reused ( used wires for further corporate savings! SOTA in 2050, glitchy ever since 2051. Bet you didn't realize corporate drones get used cyber/wires for their chargen. )

The corporation gains by using the wire in several ways:

Workforce is immediately up to speed, no weeks or months of oritentation/training.

No training staff required for same.

Because they can hire minimum talent they never have to pay top coin regardless of qualifications since they will be fitting you to the job.

Any who don't work out just get the wires ripped out and dumped, a healthy motivator for the rest of the flock to behave.

Add in reusing the wire and that brings costing down a bit.

So trying to use the corporate usage for cost comparison is never going to add up as there are different factors to consider.

End of the day the SR5 prices are a bit screwy and hopefully we can have this re-examined/errataed but I won't be holding my breath. (and not just because my ****** air tank went offline)

and then someone decides that instead of paying the full asking price for second hand skillwires and skilljacks, they'll just pay a small fraction (say, the amount you'd get from fencing it - ~45,000 nuyen for a rating 4 set of skillwires and skilljack) to the employee, minus a small extraction fee (to bust them out of the labour camp or whatever it is). and heck, this presumes the guy is altruistic enough to want willing people (which, given how these workers are being treated, it is almost guaranteed there will be some willing people)... if he doesn't care whether the target is willing or not, he can just hire a team of shadowrunners to extract half a dozen of these workers from what is likely not a terribly secure site, and suddenly he's got 6 sets of skillwires and 6 sets of skilljacks for a tiny fraction of the purchase price.

before long, someone else gets the same idea. and then someone else. and all of them are competing with each other, and since they didn't ever have *any* of the overhead apart from storage and paying a group of shadowrunners to extract random workers from low security areas). pretty soon, there's a bunch of people who haven't made any sort of agreement in terms of price-fixing selling skillwires for a tiny portion of the official value, unless of course the corps blow enough money on security.

at which point, we reach a very important question: why aren't they just using drones? corporations also get to pay production cost of drones, and drones are pretty inexpensive. if it isn't cheaper to use drones than it is to use wired humans, nobody would use wired humans. and yet, the megas are perfectly happy selling drones for a few thousand. there's even a humanoid drone that comes with an autosoft and appropriate tools to use that autosoft (the 'tool' in question is a sword, but if these things can be cheaply made to be able to dual-wield swords with skill equivalent to a skilled amateur human, you can bet something similar can be made that will perform many other complex tasks requiring great precision, technique, awareness of the situation, and swift decision-making and reflexes).

As for recycling corp drones, it's plausible but would require a lot of work. You can't just rip the wires out and run, you'd have to do surgery. Any corp drone is going to have implanted security tags (which are hardened against erasers) and so you'd have to find it and cut it out as well before you could move the body. You'd probably also get helluva notoriety in the process.

there are people in the setting who are not squeamish about this sort of work. people who, if we are to believe what we've been told, supply a large portion of the sixth world's medical replacement body parts and second-hand 'ware to both legal and illegal medical facilities.

so, umm... yeah. that ship has already sailed. it's already a thing. it's not like i'm coming up with something new and different. this is already business as usual for some people, and most likely if you have any contacts with a medical background they've already accepted the fact that this network exists and do business with them on a regular basis.